Intelligent Connectivity

IoT Forecasts You Need to Know

Wired magazine describes a new era, where “the most mundane items in our lives can talk wirelessly among themselves, performing tasks on command, giving us data we’ve never had before.” The Internet of Things (IoT) is a transformational technology revolution, where 50 billion things will be connected to the Internet by 2020.

While IoT promises to transform businesses, bring about massive economic wealth, and create immense social value, its real impact on the economy, however remains somewhat ambiguous. In order to present a clear perception, top agencies conducted research, and tried to pin a ‘dollar-value’ to the emerging global IoT market. Discussed below, are excerpts from various research, analyzing IoT forecasts and its market estimates.

The Gartner Forecast:

Gartner estimates, in 2016, 5.5 million things (or devices) will get connected every day. The technology research company, in a forecast predicted that 6.4 billion connected things will be used worldwide in 2016, up 30 percent from 2015, and is expected to reach 20.8 billion by 2020. Gartner’s research report cites, IoT in total will support services spending of $235 billion in 2016, an increase of 22 percent from 2015.

BI’s Research on IoT Ecosystem:

For nearly two years, BI Intelligence is closely monitoring the IoT ecosystem. In its report, BI Intelligence discusses the IoT ecosystem, its environments, and its components, including devices, analytics, networks, and security. The key points from the report are:

There will be 34 billion devices in total, connected to the internet by 2020, up from 10 billion in 2015. Out of this IoT devices will account for 24 billion, while traditional computing devices will comprise 10 billion.

Close to $6 trillion spending on IoT solutions over the next five years.

Business enterprises will be the top adopters, while government organizations are expected to be second largest adopters of the IoT ecosystems.

Even though, consumer adoption will trail behind businesses and governments, it will still consume massive number of devices and also invest significantly in IoT ecosystems.

Cisco’s IoT Market Predictions

Cisco predicts, the global IoT market will touch $14.4 trillion by 2022. Cisco’s study suggests major IoT investments will be parked in improving customer experiences. Additional areas of investment include, reducing the time-to-market ($3T), improving supply chain and logistics ($2.7T), cost reduction strategies ($2.5T) and enhancing productivity ($2.5T). An infographic by Oracle based on various market reports including Cisco’s also revealed that 50% of IoT activity will be in manufacturing, transformation, smart cities and consumer markets.

In its report, McKinsey cited potential IoT growth between $3.9 and $11.1 trillion by 2025. This essentially means, IoT by 2025, will represent near about 11% of the world's economy. The McKinsey report includes nine different segments and their estimated valuation:

Autonomous vehicles and maintenance: $210 to $740 billion

Public health and transportation: $930 billion to $1.7 trillion

Logistics and navigation: $560 billion to $850 billion

Fitness: $170 billion to $1.6 trillion

Medical and safety: $160 billion to $930 billion

Retail environments: $410 billion to $1.2 trillion

Factories and equipment optimization: $1.2 billion to $3.7 trillion

Security and energy: $70 billion to $150 billion

Consumer and home: $200 billion to $350 billion

In short, all predictions and forecasts indicate that the IoT market will remain strong, energized, and supercharged, for at least a decade.